CEE professor Helen Nguyen has been selected as a 2024-2025 Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Specialist. With these awards, she will spend six months studying antimicrobial resistance in Southeast Asia (SEA).
Increased use of antibiotics to aid human health, livestock and crop industries has resulted in a global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis. In SEA, where climate change outcomes create ideal conditions for the growth of antimicrobial resistant bacteria, expanding knowledge of AMR’s environmental factors is especially important. Nguyen’s Fulbright research will address this developing issue by investigating where, when and whether AMR in the environment leads to human health impacts.
The project will take place in three phases across Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. In addition to improving literacy on environmental facets of AMR, Nguyen’s scholarship will help enhance research capacity of the universities she works with while abroad.
Though this isn’t Nguyen’s first selection as a Fulbright scholar (she was selected in 2016 for study in Israel), the honor remains profound. It affords her the opportunity to conduct research on the ground in places most vulnerable to the AMR-exacerbating impacts of climate change, something she believes is the key to creating a positive impact through science.
“I strongly believe that science should be focused on concrete solutions and working together with the people that these solutions intend to serve,” Nguyen says. “Fulbright gives me this valuable opportunity to go with my passion doing solution-driven science and contribute to building the education and research capacity in Southeast Asia.”
While in Vietnam, Nguyen will lead another project, “Farm2Vet: Combatting AMR on the Farm Frontier.” Farm2Vet received first prize in the Trinity Challenge and will address data gaps in lower-income areas disproportionately affected by AMR.
Both Farm2Vet and Nguyen’s Fulbright Research will begin in January 2025. After completion of her six-month stint as a Fulbright Scholar, Nguyen will return to Vietnam for an additional six weeks to complete her work as a Fulbright Specialist.
Thumbnail photo: istockphoto.com/qui-thinh-tran